Monday, July 7, 2014

NOM continues to lie about the Regnerus 'study'

It takes some set of balls for National Organization for Marriage to trot out the infamous Regnerus study. Just today, there is a new study confirming what every other scientific study has concluded. Children raised by gay couples are as healthy and happy as their peers (and possibly more so). Yet, according to NOM today:

Compared with children raised by their married biological parents, children raised in same-sex households are much more likely to have received welfare growing up, have lower educational attainment, report less safety and security in their family of origin, report more ongoing "negative impact" from their family of origin, are more likely to suffer from depression, and have been arrested more often.

The study also showed that children of lesbian mothers are almost 4 times more likely to be currently on public assistance …

Those are outright lies. As confirmed below, Regnerus did not study "children raised in same-sex households." Regnerus studied children raised in failed and dysfunctional marriages. One spouse had an affair with a same-sex paramour and the child was aware of the affair. These were kids raised in the 80's and 90's, before marriage equality.

Mark Regnerus' own professional organization, the American Sociological Association tore apart his conclusions about children who, he claimed, were raised by gays and lesbians.

First, the Regnerus study does not specifically examine children born or adopted into same-sex parent families, but instead examines children who, from the time they were born until they were 18 or moved out,had a parent who at any time had “a same-sex romantic relationship.” … As Regnerus noted, the majority of the individuals characterized by him as children of “lesbian mothers”and “gay fathers” were the offspring of failed opposite-sex unions whose parent subsequently had a same-sex relationship.

In other words, Regnerus did not study or analyze the children of two same-sex parents.

The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration. The evidence adduced at trial demonstrated that his 2012 “study” was hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder, which found it “essential that the necessary data be gathered to settle the question in the forum of public debate about what kinds of family arrangement are best for society” and which “was confident that the traditional understanding of marriage will be vindicated by this study.” … In the funder’s view, “the future of the institution of marriage at this moment is very uncertain” and “proper research” was needed to counter the many studies showing no differences in child outcomes. The funder also stated that “this is a project where time is of the essence.” Time was of the essence at the time of the funder’s comments in April 2011, and when Dr. Regnerus published the NFSS in 2012, because decisions such as Perry v. Schwarzenegger … and Windsor v. United States, were threatening the funder’s concept of “the institution of marriage."

That "funder" that the judge is referring to is Witherspoon Institute which was co-founded by Louis Tellez and Robert George. Tellez, an Opus Dei numerary (a secular celibate) is on the board of National Organization for Marriage, an organization that Robert George also co-founded.

What does any of this have to do with marriage equality in the first place? Gay couples are raising children and those kids would be better off with married parents. Proper concern for the welfare of children should make one a proponent of marriage equality.